HTTPS Is A Ranking Factor

Is your site secure? HTTPS is now a ranking factor. Visit Google Webmaster blog for more information.

Cheers! 

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html

Google Scraper Report Tool

Before, scraper pages report was before based on a spreadsheet, beta, when Google was testing algorithmic changes for scraper sites: http://goo.gl/IecHpo ... Today, Matt Cutts tweeted a new scraper report form. Feel free to use!

SEO Prediction in 2014

Happy New Year! It was a crazy Q3 and Q4 for me but gladly we hit our company target, thanks to the efforts of all! While new targets are rounding up for different companies, we digital marketing professionals should have some insights to guide us as we move forward with our craft.

I say:

• More Knowledge Graph data
• Some redesigns for Adwords ads
• More mobile results appearing in the results page including (in app content)
• Better overall UX and UI in Google results
• More personalized results and targeted results to seamless UX with Google's acquisition of Behavio
• Guest blogging will have lesser impact or correlation to ranking
• Mobile sites will be a default

With all the changes (versions of both Penguin and Panda and Hummingbird) and these predictions, "Search Engine Optimization" will seem to veer towards to be more of "Search Experience Optimization" in 2014.

How about you? What's your prediction? :)

SEO: Separate IP Address for Each Country-Specific Site

Should I use a separate IP address for each country-specific site? Today, Matt Cutts answered this question in another webmaster video. He said ideally it would be great to have different IPs on different locations for their respective locations or countries. But it seems that SEOs and Webmasters shouldn't worry about this too much as Google is smart enough to take TLDs (top level domains) as a strong indicator that your site is operating normally.

Click here to see the video in Google Webmaster YouTube Channel.

Hummingbird: Google Algorithm Update

Hummingbird update today (9/26/2013). Google announced that this update will be optimizing for Voice Search and long search queries. According to Moz "Hummingbird has been compared to Caffeine, and seems to be a core algorithm update that may power changes to semantic search and the Knowledge Graph for months to come." Amid Singhal, search executive of Google, said that users can now be comfortable searching for long queries instead of breaking the thought into keywords. I think this is a real game changer for Google and another step to help those who were left behind in using their search.

Another thought for me is that Hummingbird tells me more that SEO is not dying - instead, it's just moving to a path towards Content Marketing. The reason is that Google keeps on telling SEO's to create compelling content and with this update, it beats how SEO's battle it out on a keyword basis. Google hasn't announced how this update would affect sites that primarily rely on target keywords but nothing has changed as to how websites should do their SEO and content marketing: Link Naturally and Provide Great Content.

How do you think this update can impact you and/or your business?

SEO Updates 2nd Quarter of 2013

Wow, time flew fast for me this July. This was a challenging month for me since the Penguin 2.0, Panda Dance and the Multi-Week update effects. True indeed that it has affected some of the sites I'm currently managing. Tests and recovery plan had been implemented. To this point, I'm working closely with top management to get us back and stronger on this cruel web competition.

May 9 update 
- gigantic drops reported but no confirmed update from Google's webspam team.

May 21 (pre-Penguin  update) 
- update that lessens domain crowding. This opened up a room for sites not ranking and decreased some of the top guys showing multiple pages in one query.

May 22 (Penguin 2.0) 
- a webspam change that targeted more of the pages instead of sites trying to kill Black Hats.

June 11 algorithm update 
- otherwise know as the Payday Loan update. Targeted spammy results.

June 11 Panda Dance 
- this was a 10 day roll out update

June 27 Matt Cutts tweeted the "multi-week" update

July 18 Panda Recovery 
- A first aid for those affected by Panda.

Did I miss anything? Feel free to share!

Google: Penguin 2.0 to Roll Out Soon

Matt Cutts, Google's software engineer and Head of the Webspam Team has recently announced what to expect for SEO in the coming months. In a video released today he is proud to announce that Google will be rolling out Penguin 2.0 soon. It is very important to follow these SEO updates to help you in your digital marketing and online brand presence. Here is the summary of what he mentioned in this video:

• Google still aims to make all the changes that make a site compelling - it is of course through high quality content.
  
  
• Penguin 2.0 will target the black hat web span. This is more comprehensive than penguin.
  
  
• They will look up more on Advertorials that violate Google's quality guidelines. Advertorials should not float page ranks and should be clear in conspicuous disclosures.
  
  
• Upstream to deny the value to link spammers. They are looking to roll out a new system with a more sophisticated analysis.
  
  
• New comprehensive system to detect hack sites better. 
  
  
• Aims to help regular webmasters - algorithms to give more authority. E.g medical or travel. 
  
  
• Updating sites affected by Panda - find additional signals for sites that in the grey area that has quality.
  
  
• Refine host clustering - once you see a cluster of results from one domain in the first page you should see less in the succeeding pages.
  
  
• More for Webmasters - more concrete details and reports.

Coming in the summer of 2013.

Google is getting smarter and smarter so....

Black Hats Beware!

Google Webmaster's "x-default hreflang" for International Landing Pages

Today, Google Webmaster Blog introduced a new rel-alternate-hreflang annotation that webmasters can use to specify homepages supported by Google and Yandex.

We can annotate this in the sitemaps or by using HTML tags like as follows:

It basically tells Google algorithms that the page containing the new "x-default hreflang attribute" is not targeting any specific locale or language thus making it as a default page as the best pick.

So is your website targeting global or multiple countries? Then you might find this very helpful. Try it now! :)